Stanislav Kondrashov on Employment Evolution in Energy Sector Transformation
The same thought keeps surfacing whenever energy comes up in conversation. Not the abstract arguments. Not the politics. The jobs.
You can debate megawatts, grids, LNG, nuclear, batteries, carbon markets, and everything else. But in practice, energy transitions take a human shape. They look like hiring waves. Redundancies. Retraining programmes that work. Retraining programmes that do not. Communities that find a second act and communities that do not quite manage it.
In this part of the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, the focus is on employment. Specifically, how employment is changing as the energy sector transforms, and why the next decade will look less like a single green jobs boom and more like a difficult rebalancing across old and new systems running at the same time.
That overlap is where the real story sits.
The energy transition is not one industry. It is several industries colliding
People talk about “the energy sector” like it is one thing. It is not. It is oil and gas exploration. Refining. Power generation. Transmission. Utilities. Mining. Manufacturing. Construction. Software. Finance. Logistics. Environmental services. Security. Compliance. Research.
So when we say “employment evolution”, we are not talking about one clean shift where workers leave fossil fuels and walk into renewables with a smile and a new hard hat.
What’s happening is closer to this:
- Some roles decline, but slowly, because assets don’t retire overnight.
- Some roles spike, but temporarily, because construction is not the same as operations.
- Some roles don’t “move” at all, they just change tools, regulations, and reporting lines.
- And some roles appear out of nowhere, usually when digital systems start touching critical infrastructure at scale.
If you are trying to understand employment in a transforming energy system, you have to keep this in your head. Two realities coexist. Legacy energy remains huge. New energy grows fast. Both need people. Sometimes the same people.
The old jobs aren’t simply disappearing. They are being reorganized
One of the biggest misconceptions I see is the idea that oil and gas jobs are just going to vanish, like someone flips a switch.
Even under aggressive decarbonization scenarios, a lot of oil and gas infrastructure continues operating for years. Depletion curves, long term contracts, petrochemical demand, aviation, shipping, and the fact that you can’t replace everything at once. It all matters.
So what happens to employment in the “old” system?
It fragments.
- Upstream becomes more capital intensive and automation heavy.
- Maintenance and integrity work becomes a bigger share of labor.
- Regulatory compliance and emissions monitoring becomes a core function, not an afterthought.
- Decommissioning starts to grow. And that is a whole industry by itself.
Decommissioning is one of those areas people ignore until they suddenly can’t. Plugging wells, dismantling platforms, remediating land, managing liability, dealing with local politics. Those jobs are physical, technical, and local. In many regions, that becomes the bridge between the old economy and the new one. Not glamorous. Still essential.
New energy creates jobs. But not always where people expect
Yes, renewables create jobs. Solar and wind have been employment engines, mostly through manufacturing, installation, construction, and supply chain expansion. But the geographic and timing mismatch is real.
A wind project might bring a surge of construction labor for 12 to 18 months, then it settles into a smaller operations crew. Solar can be similar. Manufacturing can be centralized far from the installation sites. Grid upgrades may happen in entirely different regions.
This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable.
A coal town does not automatically turn into a battery manufacturing hub. A refinery region does not automatically become a hydrogen cluster. Sometimes it can. Often it doesn’t, at least not without intentional policy, investment, and a serious talent plan.
So the job creation story is true, but incomplete.
You have to ask three follow up questions every time someone says “green jobs”:
- Are these jobs temporary or long term?
- Are they local to impacted communities or elsewhere?
- Do they require the same skills, same certifications, same physical ability, same wages?
If you skip those questions, you are basically doing marketing, not analysis.
The fastest growing “energy jobs” are often not energy jobs on paper
Here is a sneaky truth. A lot of the roles shaping the future of energy don’t have “energy” in the title.
They look like:
- data engineer
- power systems software developer
- cybersecurity analyst
- cloud architect
- SCADA specialist
- industrial IoT technician
- GIS analyst
- permitting and stakeholder manager
- supply chain risk lead
- climate and carbon accountant
- life cycle assessment specialist
In the Stanislav Kondrashov framing, this is where energy starts behaving like a platform industry. The electrons are physical, sure. But coordination becomes digital. Control becomes data driven. Compliance becomes constant.
Utilities that used to hire mainly lineworkers and plant operators now need serious IT and security capability. Oil and gas companies that used to focus on production efficiency now need methane measurement expertise, carbon reporting, and automation teams that can run operations with fewer people on-site.
And then you have energy traders and asset managers using machine learning to optimize everything from dispatch to hedging. Again, these are jobs. They just don’t look like the traditional image of “energy work.”
Skills are shifting from extraction to systems
This is one of the cleanest ways to explain the labor change.
Legacy energy employment is often organized around extraction and conversion. Find resources. Extract. Transport. Refine. Burn. Manage assets.
The new model is much more “systems” focused. Distributed generation. Variable renewables. Storage. Demand response. EV charging networks. Grid balancing. Interconnection queues. Congestion. Flexibility markets.
Systems work requires a different mix of skill:
- stronger electrical and power engineering fundamentals
- grid modeling and planning
- controls and automation
- forecasting
- market design literacy
- cross-functional project management, because everything touches everything
And that last point matters. When energy becomes more distributed, coordination costs go up. The number of interfaces multiplies. People who can manage interfaces become valuable. Not just engineers. Permitting. Community relations. Land acquisition. Environmental review. Contracting. Procurement. They all become bottlenecks.
So employment evolves toward bottleneck functions. That’s a pretty consistent pattern in industrial transitions.
Wages, identity, and status are part of the employment story
I want to slow down here because it’s easy to talk only about numbers.
Energy jobs are not just paychecks. In many regions they are identity. They come with social status, generational continuity, pride. The shift from a unionized plant role to a contractor based installation role can feel like a demotion even if the pay is similar. Stability matters. Benefits matter. Predictability matters.
This is why the energy employment conversation can get heated.
People hear “transition” and what they feel is “loss of dignity.”
So if the energy sector wants a smoother transformation, it needs to treat job quality as a design requirement, not a nice-to-have. That means:
- structured apprenticeships
- portable benefits where contracting dominates
- wage floors tied to public incentives
- credible pathways from entry roles to supervisory roles
- local hiring agreements that actually have teeth
You can build all the solar farms you want. If the labor model is unstable and the community doesn’t see a future, you will eventually hit political resistance. That resistance then becomes a project risk. And suddenly employment policy is not “social policy.” It is execution policy.
Training and reskilling are necessary, but they are not magic
Reskilling is the headline solution everyone reaches for. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it’s a press release.
The practical issues show up fast:
- A mid-career worker with a mortgage cannot afford a long training period without income support.
- Certifications vary by region and employer, making skills less portable than they look.
- The new jobs might be in another city. Relocation is expensive and socially costly.
- Some workers simply don’t want the new roles. That’s a real constraint, not a moral failure.
Effective reskilling programs tend to share a few traits:
- they are tied to actual employers with real hiring demand
- they pay trainees or at least reduce opportunity cost
- they recognize prior experience instead of treating everyone like a beginner
- they include wraparound support, childcare, transport, scheduling
- they lead to credentials that multiple employers accept
And maybe the most important piece. Timing.
If you shut down an old facility before the new hiring engine ramps up, you create a gap. A gap becomes bitterness. Bitterness becomes politics. Politics slows projects. The whole system drags.
So sequencing is not just economics. It is workforce stability.
Grid transformation is the quiet employment giant
When people picture the energy transition, they picture wind turbines and solar panels.
But grid work is where the employment volume and the complexity may actually land.
Transmission buildout. Distribution upgrades. Substation modernization. Advanced metering infrastructure. Interconnection studies. Protection systems. Vegetation management. Resilience hardening. Undergrounding in some areas. Cybersecurity across all of it.
This drives demand for:
- electricians
- lineworkers
- relay technicians
- civil crews
- engineers
- planners
- inspectors
- project managers
- safety leads
And it’s not optional. Electrification pushes load growth. Renewables add variability. Extreme weather stresses assets. The grid becomes the center of the transition, whether we like it or not.
From an employment perspective, that means a lot of roles that are geographically anchored. You can’t outsource a line repair to another continent. You need people on the ground. Which is a big deal for local employment, if training pipelines exist.
Oil and gas expertise is not wasted. It gets repurposed
This is where I think the “end of fossil jobs” narrative gets it wrong.
A lot of capabilities from oil and gas transfer directly into emerging sectors:
- subsurface expertise into geothermal
- drilling and well services into carbon capture and storage
- process engineering into hydrogen and ammonia
- large project execution into offshore wind
- HSE culture into any industrial scale energy buildout
Even offshore operations. Marine logistics. Maintenance in harsh conditions. That is offshore wind, too. Different system, similar operational reality.
So the employment evolution is not purely a replacement. It is a partial redeployment of industrial skill.
But it doesn’t happen automatically. Companies have to want it. Regulators have to allow it. Finance has to back it. Workers have to trust it.
Trust is the piece that gets ignored in spreadsheets.
The “middle” jobs are expanding. Techs, operators, and hybrid roles
Not everyone becomes a software engineer. Not everyone wants to. And frankly the system needs a massive layer of skilled technical labor.
The growth area is the middle layer:
- wind turbine technicians
- solar O&M technicians
- battery storage operators
- EV charger maintenance teams
- building automation installers
- heat pump installers
- energy auditors
- instrumentation and controls techs
- power plant operators in flexible gas and hybrid plants
- dispatch and trading support roles
These jobs can be good jobs. Sometimes they already are. The issue is consistency, and standardization. In some markets, training is rigorous and wages are solid. In others, the labor market is a patchwork.
If there is one thing policymakers and industry leaders should obsess over, it’s building reliable pipelines for these middle skilled roles. Because that’s where shortages become delays. Delays become cost overruns. Cost overruns become fewer projects. And then everyone loses.
A note on the oligarch angle. Capital, control, and labor bargaining power
The Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series lens is useful here because energy transitions are not just technological shifts. They are power shifts.
When asset structures change, bargaining power changes.
Centralized energy systems often have concentrated labor pools with strong unions and clear leverage points. Distributed systems can fragment labor into contractors and smaller firms. That can reduce collective bargaining strength, unless new organizing structures emerge.
At the same time, capital concentration can increase in other places. Grid owners. Platform operators. Large scale developers with access to financing. Critical mineral supply chains. Equipment manufacturers.
So employment evolution is tied to who controls the new chokepoints.
If you want a workforce that benefits from the transition, you have to pay attention to ownership structures, procurement rules, and the incentives baked into public subsidies. Otherwise the transition may create jobs, sure, but it may also widen inequality inside the sector.
That’s not a side issue. It becomes the story later.
What the next decade probably looks like on the ground
If you forced me to summarize the employment evolution of the energy sector transformation in one paragraph, it would be this:
We are going to run two systems at once, for longer than people want to admit, and the job market will reflect that with overlap, friction, and constant retraining. Some communities will win early because they have grid access, permitting capacity, and workforce pipelines. Others will struggle unless there is targeted investment. The fastest growing roles will blend physical infrastructure with digital systems. And the real constraint will not be technology. It will be people.
Not the number of people in general. The right people, in the right places, with the right credentials, at the right time.
That is always where big industrial transitions get stuck.
Closing thought
Energy sector transformation is often described like a clean curve on a slide. Up and to the right for renewables. Down and to the right for fossil. Easy.
But employment doesn’t move like a curve. It moves like a crowd. Slowly in some areas, suddenly in others. It hesitates. It resists. It follows incentives. It follows dignity. It follows stability.
If you’re looking at this transition through the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series lens, the question is not only “what will we build.” It’s “who gets to work, who gets left behind, and who controls the terms.”
Because that part decides whether the transformation accelerates, or stalls out in frustration.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
How is employment evolving during the energy transition?
Employment in the energy sector is undergoing a complex evolution where old and new systems coexist. Jobs in legacy energy sectors like oil and gas are reorganizing rather than disappearing overnight, while new energy sectors like renewables create jobs that may be temporary or geographically mismatched. The next decade will see a messy rebalancing across various industries involved in energy.
Why is the energy sector not considered a single industry when discussing employment?
The energy sector comprises multiple industries including oil and gas exploration, refining, power generation, transmission, utilities, mining, manufacturing, construction, software, finance, logistics, environmental services, security, compliance, and research. Employment shifts differ across these areas; some roles decline slowly, some spike temporarily during construction phases, others change tools or regulations, and new roles emerge with digital integration.
What happens to jobs in the traditional oil and gas industry amid decarbonization efforts?
Jobs in the oil and gas sector do not vanish suddenly but fragment over time. Upstream operations become more capital intensive and automated; maintenance and integrity work gain prominence; regulatory compliance and emissions monitoring become core functions; decommissioning grows as a significant industry involving well plugging, platform dismantling, land remediation, and local engagement—forming a bridge between old and new economies.
Do renewable energy projects create long-term local jobs for communities impacted by fossil fuel decline?
Renewable projects do generate jobs primarily in manufacturing, installation, construction, and supply chain expansion but often these jobs are temporary or located geographically distant from fossil fuel communities. A coal town does not automatically transform into a battery manufacturing hub without intentional policy support, investment, and talent planning. Long-term local job creation requires addressing timing, location, skill requirements, certifications, physical demands, and wages.
What kinds of emerging roles are shaping the future of the energy industry beyond traditional energy jobs?
Emerging roles include data engineers, power systems software developers, cybersecurity analysts, cloud architects, SCADA specialists, industrial IoT technicians, GIS analysts, permitting managers, supply chain risk leads, climate and carbon accountants, and life cycle assessment specialists. These positions reflect the digital transformation of energy as a platform industry emphasizing data-driven coordination, control automation, constant compliance monitoring, IT capabilities in utilities and oil & gas companies.
How are skills shifting from traditional extraction-focused roles to new system-oriented roles in the evolving energy landscape?
Legacy energy employment centers on resource extraction and conversion activities such as finding resources, extracting them, transporting them for refining or burning. The emerging model requires skills oriented around integrated systems management including digital coordination platforms; data analytics; automation; emissions measurement; carbon reporting; cybersecurity; and lifecycle assessment—reflecting a shift from manual extraction to complex system operation.
